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[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Wed Apr 02 07:26:43 GMT 2003
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, April 2, 2003
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Pentagon Embeds Public Affairs Officers With Journalists
>2. Propaganda's Diminishing Half-Life
>3. Coalition Of The Shills
>4. Edelman Defends France's Sodexho From Congressional Attack
>5. General GOP
>6. Clear Channel Gets PR Help Over Pro-War Rallies
>7. An Army of Propaganda
>8. The Spectre of Al-Jazeera
>9. Chickenhawks' War Comes Home to Roost
>10. Embedded Reporter Tactic "Sheer Genius"
>11. The Truth About Basra
>12. NYC Peace Activists Risk Arrest Protesting Media Bias
>13. Global Anger Grows Against US War on Iraq
>14. The "Information Operations" War in Iraq
>15. Rumsfeld's Happy Face Masks Deep Problems
>16. Hackers Shut Down al-Jazeera Websites
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. PENTAGON EMBEDS PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICERS WITH JOURNALISTS
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=175623&site=3
> "They may not get as much attention as their media counterparts,
> but dozens of Pentagon public affairs officers are 'embedded' right
> alongside the reporters in Iraq," PR Week reports. "The Pentagon
> also maintains the Coalition Press Information Center (CPIC) in
> Kuwait, a base of operations for public affairs officers not
> traveling with troops. A 24-hour operation designed to keep up with
> news cycles in every time zone, ... one of the CPIC's most vital
> roles is to discourage 'rogue' journalists from venturing into
> dangerous areas by providing the information they might otherwise
> attempt to get on their own." The Wall Street Journal praised the
> Defense Department's PR Strategy. "The embedded reporters will
> continue to be a brilliant strategy by the Pentagon -- one that
> should echo in the rules of corporate communications," the
> Journal's Clark S. Judge writes. "As the Pentagon has demonstrated
> so aptly, the essential strategy for becoming the standard of truth
> when no one believes you is to open your operations to the kind of
> risk that no one would take if he were planning to lie. Spin is out
> of the question. Good or bad, the story is there for the reporter
> to see."
>SOURCE: PR Week, March 31, 2003; Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049173202
>
>2. PROPAGANDA'S DIMINISHING HALF-LIFE
>http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030401051950914
> "In the good old days, the US used to tell a lie -- crass
> propaganda -- and it would stick for a long time. Journalists would
> have to scurry for months before they could expose the lies, but by
> then it would be almost irrelevant," writes London-based economist
> Paul de Rooij for PalestineChronicle.com. "In the run up to the
> US-Iraq war, it became increasingly evident that propaganda has a
> diminished half-life. ... As soon as a propaganda ploy has been
> exposed, the current media spinners will move to the next tall
> story. They seem to count on either the poor memory of the
> population, their general disinterest or their credulity. ... There
> is only one antidote against propaganda, and that is a relevant
> sense of history and a strong collective memory. When we remember
> the lessons from the past, and when we remember what happened even
> a few days ago, then the job of the propagandists and their
> warmongering bosses, becomes much more difficult."
>SOURCE: PalestineChronicle.com, April 1, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049173201
>
>3. COALITION OF THE SHILLS
>http://www.areporter.com/sys-tmpl/thecoalitionofthewilling/
> Government officials from the U.S. and U.K. insist on labeling the
> American and British forces in Iraq as "coalition forces" despite
> the fact that the majority of "coalition of the willing" countries
> are providing little to no support for the Iraq invasion. But as
> Reuters reports, "It can pay to be a member of President Bush's
> coalition against Iraq." Freelance journalist Constantine von
> Hoffman has compiled a chart, showing the GDP, annual military
> expenditures, number of troops being sent to Iraq by all the latest
> coalition partners, and the amount promised to each in Bush's
> supplemental wartime budget request.
>SOURCE: Reuters, March 26, 2003; AReporter.com, April 1, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2003.html#1049173200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049173200
>
>4. EDELMAN DEFENDS FRANCE'S SODEXHO FROM CONGRESSIONAL ATTACK
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0331sodexho_alliance.htm
> "France's Sodexho Alliance is fending off Congressional bids to
> strip it of its $880 million food service contract with the U.S.
> Marines because of the French snub of President Bush's invasion of
> Iraq," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "Edelman is our corporate agency
> of record, and we use it for crisis work," Bonnie Goldstein, a PR
> staffer at Sodexho's North American headquarters in Gaithersburg,
> Md., told O'Dwyer's. "Rep. Jack Kingman (R-Ga.) wrote a letter to
> Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking him to consider
> transferring the Marines contract to a U.S.-based firm. That would
> send a 'tangible signal to the French government that there are
> economic consequences associated with their international
> policies.' The letter was signed by 59 Congressmen," O'Dwyer's
> writes.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, March 31, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049086803
>
>5. GENERAL GOP
>http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/DocID/F6A45D33BEA21C9E86256CFA00491CCD?OpenDocument&story
> "According to recent leaks from the Pentagon, Gen. Tommy Franks and
> other uniformed war planners argued with Defense Secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld over how many troops and how much armor to commit to the
> war," writes Lucian K. Truscott IV. "The soldiers wanted more of
> both," but "Rumsfeld was reportedly among the influential group on
> the administration war team who predicted that the Iraqi army would
> quickly fold after it had been shocked and awed. ... The question
> is, why didn't the generals insist on the force structure they were
> correct in thinking would be necessary? The fact that more than
> two-thirds of senior military officers identify themselves as
> conservative Republicans - and the true percentage is probably a
> lot higher than that - might have something to do with the
> military's lack of backbone. ... The lack of backbone in the top
> ranks of Pentagon generals when dealing with their Republican
> friends may cause unnecessary deaths on the battlefield, a high
> price to pay for a military that is finally happy with the politics
> of its civilian leaders, but must deal uneasily with their lack of
> military expertise."
>SOURCE: St. Louis Today, March 31, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1049086802
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049086802
>
>6. CLEAR CHANNEL GETS PR HELP OVER PRO-WAR RALLIES
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/business/media/31RADI.html?ex=1050131696&ei=1&en=605cc49ef21e6063
> "Clear Channel Communications ... finds itself fending off a new
> set of accusations: that the company is using its considerable
> market power to drum up support for the war in Iraq, while muzzling
> musicians who oppose it. ... The critics ... cite an unusual series
> of pro-military rallies drummed up by Glenn Beck, whose talk show
> is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, a Clear Channel
> subsidiary. ... Thirteen of those rallies were co-sponsored and
> promoted by local Clear Channel stations, including one held March
> 15 in Atlanta that was sponsored by Clear Channel's WGST and
> attended by an estimated 25,000 people. Further plans for rallies
> include events in Tampa; Lubbock, Tex.; and Dothan, Ala. Clear
> Channel, which hired Brainerd Communicators, a financial
> communications and crisis-management firm, last week to help deal
> with the controversy, did not make Mr. Beck available for an
> interview."
>SOURCE: New York Times, March 31, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1049086801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049086801
>
>7. AN ARMY OF PROPAGANDA
>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15507
> "It's no coincidence that Americans, and others around the world,
> are echoing the exact same phrases and news bites at the same times
> with near-military precision. It's the result of a slickly
> orchestrated public relations campaign on the part of the military
> and the U.S. government that is borrowing the best practices of the
> corporate PR world. ... The PR industry, as many may know, was
> actually started by the military during World War I, when
> persuasive techniques were developed to recruit soldiers. 'After
> the [First World War] a lot of those [PR] people went to work for
> the private sector and are seen as the grandfathers of PR,' says
> Laura Miller, associate editor of PR Watch [and author of the
> article War Is Sell ].... "They were very up front about the fact
> that [in their opinion] in a democracy, public opinion needs to be
> controlled by a small number of people who know what's best for the
> public.' In the case of the war against Iraq, that means that there
> should be no confusion or dissent about the aims and progress of
> the war."
>SOURCE: AlterNet, March 31, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1049086800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1049086800
>
>8. THE SPECTRE OF AL-JAZEERA
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,924469,00.html
> Throughout the world, people are witnessing scenes of horror from
> Iraq on Al-Jazeera, the Arab cable news station. However,
> Al-Jazeera barely penetrates the United States. The network's
> newly-launched English-language web site remains down and may not
> be available for several weeks due to hacker attacks. According to
> Al-Jazeera correspondent Faisal Bodi, "few here doubt that the
> provenance of the attack is the Pentagon." Nevertheless, the
> station has become one of the most sought-after news resources in
> the world. "I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply
> because the western media coverage has been so poor," Bodi says.
> "Of all the major global networks, al-Jazeera has been alone in
> proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed as an
> illegal enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing
> campaign, the blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the
> screaming infants and the corpses. Its team of on-the-ground,
> unembedded correspondents has provided a corrective to the official
> line that the campaign is, barring occasional resistance, going to
> plan."
>SOURCE: Guardian (UK), March 28, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1048827603
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048827603
>
>9. CHICKENHAWKS' WAR COMES HOME TO ROOST
>http://www.msnbc.com/news/752664.asp#030328
> If you think you remember that we were promised a quick, easy war,
> your memory is not faulty. Eric Alterman has gone to the trouble of
> assembling some of those recent quotes in which Bush administration
> officials and pundits predicted, not that war is hell, but that it
> would be heaven. "Support for Saddam ... will collapse at the first
> whiff of gunpowder," predicted Richard Perle. The war will be "a
> cakewalk," said Ken Adelman. According to Donald Rumsfeld, "it will
> not be long." And Dick Cheney said the Iraqi people "will welcome
> as liberators the United States."
>SOURCE: MSNBC, March 28, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1048827602
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048827602
>
>10. EMBEDDED REPORTER TACTIC "SHEER GENIUS"
>http://www.themeasurementstandard.com/issues/303/eng/painemilitary303.asp
> "The current war has been called the best-covered war in history,
> and certainly the visuals and reports from 'embedded' reporters
> have been spectacular, bringing war into our living rooms like
> never before," Katie Delahaye Paine writes in her PR firm's
> publication The Measurement Standard. "[T]he embedded reporter
> tactic is sheer genius. ... The sagacity of the tactic is that it
> is based on the basic tenet of public relations: It's all about
> relationships. The better the relationship any of us has with a
> journalist, the better the chance of that journalist picking up and
> reporting our messages. So now we have journalists making dozens --
> if not hundreds -- of new friends among the armed forces. And, if
> the bosses of their new-found buddies want to get a key message or
> two across about how sensitive the U.S. is being to humanitarian
> needs or how humanely they are treating Iraqis, what better way
> than through these embedded journalists? As a result, most (if not
> all) of the dozens of stories being filed contain key messages the
> Department of Defense wants to communicate."
>SOURCE: The Measurement Standard, March 28, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048827601
>
>11. THE TRUTH ABOUT BASRA
>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=391460
> Robert Fisk reports that "an Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds
> of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that
> Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited
> al-Jazeera videotape, filmed over the past 36 hours and newly
> arrived in Baghdad, is raw, painful, devastating. ... It is also
> proof that Basra, reportedly 'captured" and 'secured' by British
> troops last week, is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's
> forces. ... The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof
> that Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth about
> the battle for Basra."
>SOURCE: The Independent, March 28, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048827600
>
>12. NYC PEACE ACTIVISTS RISK ARREST PROTESTING MEDIA BIAS
>http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Anti-War-Protests.html?ex=1049792245&ei=1&en=f5dde147bba64b44
> "Hundreds of chanting demonstrators lined Manhattan's Fifth Avenue
> on Thursday, and dozens lay down in the street in a 'die-in' to
> protest the war. ... Anti-war groups also called for other civil
> disobedience in the city to protest media and corporate
> 'profiteering from the war.' ... Some protest signs were directed
> at the media. One protester held a sign showing a picture of
> parrots and the words, 'Don't Parrot the Right-wing Propaganda.'
> Another, 44-year-old teacher Lee Whiting, held up a sign that said,
> 'Embedded? or In Bed?' Embedded, she said, means 'journalists are
> presenting almost exclusively the military view of this war.'
> Police and security officers placed a web of barricades at the
> adjacent Rockefeller Center, home of the GE Building, NBC and The
> Associated Press, to prevent the protesters from staging their
> 'die-in" there."
>SOURCE: Associated Press, March 27, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048741201
>
>13. GLOBAL ANGER GROWS AGAINST US WAR ON IRAQ
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27PERC.html?ex=1049774803&ei=1&en=3c8ef900c48117e5
> As pundits and the Pentagon try to quantify the number of
> acceptable US casualties, world-wide opposition to the attack on
> Iraq grows by the day. The New York Times notes that "the public
> mood in many countries around the world seemed to become angrier
> and more sarcastic than ever... . Another day of global protest is
> being advertised on Web sites and posters for Sunday, April 6. If
> there was a common image summoned up by the protests and angry
> commentaries, it was of the United States as an imperial power
> intoxicated by its military supremacy but receiving a lesson in the
> price of arrogance by unexpected Iraqi resistance. ... 'The world's
> only remaining superpower is beginning to suffer from the disease
> with which every imperial power throughout history has been
> afflicted: the overestimation and overtaxing of its own
> capabilities,' Germany's Der Spiegel said. 'Could the Iraq war
> herald its decline?' "
>SOURCE: New York Times, March 27, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1048741200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048741200
>
>14. THE "INFORMATION OPERATIONS" WAR IN IRAQ
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/26/international/worldspecial/26GORDON.html?ex=1049721202&ei=1&en=07a02253e3da1698
> "Bush planners appear to have left television off the initial
> [bombing] target list because they wanted to use it to administer
> Iraq immediately after the war and to limit the damage to civilian
> infrastructure. Reports from Iraq, however, suggest that the
> American restraint was seen by many Iraqis as an indication of Mr.
> Hussein's resilience, undermining the allied message that his days
> were numbered. There are, in fact, two parallel battles underway.
> One is the intense assault American forces are mounting to set
> themselves up for a drive to Baghdad to overthrow the Saddam
> Hussein regime. The other, and equally critical, is the struggle to
> secure the support of Iraqi citizens. The military has a name for
> its campaign to win over the Iraq population It is called. 'I.O'
> for 'information operations.' The problem is that during the
> initial days of the war Mr. Hussein's 'I.O.' has been beating the
> allied 'I.O.' "
>SOURCE: New York Times, March 26, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048654802
>
>15. RUMSFELD'S HAPPY FACE MASKS DEEP PROBLEMS
>http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/5473652.htm
> Journalist Joseph L. Galloway, the military affairs correspondent
> for Knight Ridder, criticized the Bush administration's war
> fighting plan today on NPR's Fresh Air program. Galloway, the
> co-author of We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, was recently a
> consultant to Colin Powell. Yesterday Galloway reported that "the
> risks of the [Iraq] campaign are becoming increasingly apparent,
> and ... there may be a mismatch between Secretary of Defense Donald
> H. Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he has sent to carry it out.
> ... Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz
> and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the CIA
> and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of reports from the
> Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an
> immediate uprising against Hussein once the Americans attacked."
> The Washington Post reports that "the war is likely to last months
> ... senior defense officials said today." (Our Disinfopedia
> analysis warned before the war started of the danger of the Bush
> administration believing its own propaganda.)
>SOURCE: Knight Ridder, NPR, Washington Post, March 26, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1048654801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048654801
>
>16. HACKERS SHUT DOWN AL-JAZEERA WEBSITES
>http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,922264,00.html
> "The English-language and Arabic websites of Qatar-based
> broadcaster al-Jazeera were forced down this morning after a spate
> of suspected hacker attacks last night. Neither aljazeera.net,
> which gets the most hits of any Arabic website in the world, nor
> english.aljazeera.net, which launched on Monday, were available
> this morning after suspected attacks crashed both sites.
> [C]ommunications manager Jihad Ali Ballout told MediaGuardian.co.uk
> the company was doing everything possible to get the sites up and
> running.. ... Asked where the attacks originated, Ali Ballout said:
> "I wish I knew. There are rumors that the attacks originated in the
> US but at this moment in time we cannot verify that. But it is
> worrying and an indication perhaps [that] in certain quarters there
> is a fear of freedom of expression and freedom of the press."
>SOURCE: The Guardian, March 26, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2003.html#1048654800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1048654800
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University Brussels
Studies on Media, Information & Telecommunication (SMIT)
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
Office: C0.05
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
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